vRealize Automation Home Lab Upgrade

May 27, 2015 • Jonathan Frappier

With new versions of vRealize Automation and vSphere dropping, and seemingly being stable it is time to upgrade the home lab. Since this is a home lab, and somewhat basic there are just a few steps from KB2109760 that needs to be followed:

Upgrade vRA (Appliance >> IaaS)

Upgrade Application Services

Upgrade vCenter

Upgrade ESXi

In this post, I will cover the first step in the process, upgrade vRealize Automation to 6.2.latest. First, I have shut down services on my IaaS server. Now log into the VMware vCAC Appliance management interface on port 5480 - in my case https://vxprt-vcac01.vxprt.local:5480 for example and click on the update tab. Now, click on Check Updates. As you can see here, I have an available updated from 6.1.1.0 to 6.2.1.0

Now, as you might expect, click on Install Updates >> OK. The upgrade process will begin.

After a few minutes, you should be presented with a message that a reboot is required.

Click on the System tab, click the Reboot button, and click the Reboot button again; the system will reboot. Once the reboot completes, you should be able to log in and verify the version by clicking on the system tab. Notice anything different?

The updated product name; vRealize Automation is now displayed instead of vCAC Appliance and the version is 6.2.1.0. Once all the services have started, you should also be able to log into the vRealize Automation console and see the tenant information from the previous configuration.

The next step is to upgrade the IaaS components. Again this should be straight forward in a lab because all of the components are on a single server, and not distributed. Log into the IaaS server as the service account used to run the IaaS components, if you followed along in my vDM 30-in-30 challenge you would have named it something along the lines of svc_vra_iaas. Open a web browser and grab the vRA 6.2 PreReq script Brian Graf has built over on GitHub (https://github.com/vtagion/Scripts/blob/master/vRA%206.2%20PreReq%20Automation%20Script.ps1). Save, open a PowerShell console as administrator and run the script.

Follow the prompts in the prereq script, typically I have selected option 2 - I have internet access and want to download and install it automatically.

Select option 2, 2 more times. When prompted, provide the service account for the IaaS components, in my case vxprt\svc_vra_iaas and the script should complete.

Now, navigate to the vRA appliance page. Click on the vRealize Automation IaaS installation page link, download and extract the zip file containing the database upgrade scripts. From a command prompt run the following command:

dbupgrade.exe -S {servername\instancename} -d {dbname} -E

On my server I am using the default SQL Express instance, so the instance name is not needed, and my DB name is vCAC so my command looks like this:

dbupgrade -S localhost -d vCAC -E

If you are receiving any errors, make sure that Named Pipes is enabled.

Now that the DB is upgraded, download the IaaS Installer file, do not rename the file, and run it. The upgrade is of the next, next, next variety.

Click Next

Accept the terms and click next

Enter the root password for the vRA appliance, accept the certificate, and click Next

Upgrade should be the only option that is available, click Next

Enter the service account password, the server name, database name, and click Next

Click the Upgrade button

If the computer gods are on your side, the installation should complete

Click Next and Finish. If you flip back over to your vRA console, you should see all of the available tabs based on the user permission - in this case my iaasadmin user.

It was a bit over a year ago that I wrote about my 8-core home lab. I was asked if there were any updates to the build and I was curious to see how it stood up a year later. Happily for me, and anyone who has invested in this build, the same basic platform is still a solid option for your home lab. I have made a few tweaks below based on some new hardware being available. As I did last year, there was a focus on keeping cost down but having enough power to run a fully nested home lab.

As I did in the previous post with vRealize Automation, it is now time to upgrade vRealize Application services, again based on KB2109760 this would be the second item to upgrade before upgrading vCenter with embedded SSO. Not that it is horribly difficult, but there is no management interface as we had with the vRealize Automation appliance so we will have to download the files, copy them to the appliance and start the upgrade.